Discoveries of the Ways of Life
by Extantdread
Summary: A house on the base of the Rocky Mountains with a kid inside, just a young teen. One day that was gone. Right in front of the brother's eyes, the house went poof into yellow dust, replaced with odd looking dirt. Panic, frustration, mourning. All happened. Only Jacob knew what truly occurred, and where he was. The kid in the house was a universe away however.
1. Good Morning

**PLEASE READ BEFORE READING THE STORY:**

This is in fact a VERY, VERY old story. From early 2012. I.E. in the middle of Season 2. I only made it about 7 chapters in, and it was absolutely HORRENDOUS. But there were the people that liked it. I'm going to keep it mostly the same, but introduce lots more concepts and ideas into this one. So this will be pre-season 3, with unicorn Twilight and no Equestria Girls bull. So yes, I have done this before, but this is so different compared to the original I go back to old comments that criticize it and can't distinguish what they meant because of how many times I've rewritten this, especially this first chapter. Now let's see if the outdated Human in Equestria idea can still be liked...

**Chapter One: Good Morning**

The beginning of a fresh new day. Wondrous, no? Here you are, adjusting yourself, getting ready to finally obtain those oh so longly desired explanations, as I've promised.

Only at 14, almost 15 years of age this all occurred for those of you in the cryptic future. May it permanently haunt me for my own heart's sake, as I'm afraid my soul might have left me already. They've all made sure of that.

Note from the end: With this you will find my own personal entries that were produced in the process of writing this text. They are scattered about.

Shall I write for you to read? This is my last chance, but I see no reason why not to.

That fresh new day had lifted my own most positively glorious self out of bed at by far the most appropriate hour of 11 A.M. This teenager's regular routine was out of place, for it was Tuesday. Time, currently being early May, made this even a bit odder. Of course, this in reality wasn't all that odd, for this kid, me, was having a dentist's checkup just in a hour or two. Being a younger teenager, that just gives the perfect excuse to sleep in a tiny bit.

So my body went through the clockwork putting on of clothes, taking a shower, and then as I always do before the dentist's appointments, the panicking brushing and flossing.

Soon enough, I had flung myself down the stairs, ready to relax a bit before taking the plunge into the glossy white office. After turning on the TV and console, the dogs started acting up, as I usually wasn't the one to let them outside. They scratched on the door, marking the glass even worse than it had already been. You could hear a soft sigh come from yours truly, knowing that somehow that would be entirely my fault when the parents arrived. I only looked out for a moment though, and gave a glimpse to the mountains not more than 10 miles away.

Maybe my brother would blame me as well, just for fun. He always poked at me a little too much for my liking, but overall he was pretty OK. I eyed the clock for a moment. 11:50.

_ Where is he anyway?_ The guy usually got here five minutes earlier for his lunch break, I couldn't imagine what he'd gotten himself into to make him more than a minute late. He hated his work, seemed to me that he would always take any time off he could get. Being curious, I walked to the front door and looked for his car, and there it was, just down the street a little, he was going quickly though, obviously he knew he was late.

_Boom_. There it was. The perfect balance of chemicals and matter that triggered it.

There was a tinge of yellow on window that suddenly caught my attention. At first, I only dismissed it as pollen. But it grew, oh it grew. Then it glowed. I saw the red lights on the front of my brother's car that indicated his slowing. The yellow glow was brightening, from the level of a firefly to the level of the sun. My eyes were wide, I'm sure my brother's too. Now I dove back into the windowless hall, hearing the wind-like flow of energy surrounding my house. The unsure shaking of an earthquake started too.

That sound got higher, sharper, 'till it broke abruptly. The movement more intense, shaking, tossing the house back and forth, then it broke as well. There was a brief moment of silence, then the entire house felt like it dropped a foot, crashing picture frames, glass candlesticks, dishes, and other breakable things to the ground. And many of them lived up to that fragile label. The horrifying sounds of cracking glass kept on going for a good 10 seconds at least. In this time I had closed my eyes, put my hands over my ears, and laid on the ground. My entire body cringed at the resonating noise that would surely bring my imminent death by the spilling of blood of my mother's sharp words.

The glass finally stopped falling all at once, allowing my ringing ears to recoup. Now the shattering was only occasional. My mind was finally starting to comprehend the absolute ridiculousness of what had just happened.

After I had got up, I had almost started walking, but at the last moment before putting my foot down it stopped as if on its own, realizing the glass was everywhere. Carefully I hopped a bit to the coat closet with the snow boots. Opening the door caused a magnitude of coats and steel-toed boots to fall onto my face. Thankfully it didn't push me enough to knock me over, however I did manage to get a steel-toe to the cheek, leaving a nice big red mark there.

The boots were extremely helpful, they were nice and thick. My feet didn't feel a thing. My only concern then was the fact that falling over was now not only much easier with shards of slippery glass everywhere, but also much more painful.

Then the scratching on the door started again.

_Oh God, the dogs!_ I hadn't even thought of them, they were outside, where the glass didn't fall on them, but the huge amount of light almost blinded me, who knew what it would've done to them. Slowly, my boots shuffled to the door to the backyard. Out of my upper peripheral vision the yellow glow was still there, slowly decaying though. Firstly, I opened the door, but blocked it with my heavy footwear. I stepped outside, looking down at the two pooches, them looking back with an excitement in their eyes.

As luck would have it, both of them seemed to be not blind at all, and they still saw just fine. Now with my major worries out of the way, my head went up to observe the damage, but that's not at all what it noticed. No longer was the line of mountains of the Rockies there, instead many tall, darkened trees. I looked even farther up, and even with the glare from the now non-blinding sun, I could see one streak of contrast shooting up into the blue. That contrast was a single, steep, sumptuous mountain.

"Huh. I'm just gonna go wake up now."

I turned around, stupefied and utterly convinced that my mind had for some reason started dreaming about ponies. Heck, I liked dreaming about any sort of fantasy fiction any day, but it hadn't happened with ponies before.

The door slid to the right, but I wasn't confident in my assumptions enough to let the dogs inside with the glass, so I left them out. It was a nice temperature outside anyway.

Up the steps, all 16 of them. Down the hall, last door on the right, just like it still is. As soon as I was next to the bed, I flopped down on it.

If there was one thing that I had to be wrong about on that day, I would not have picked my dreaming, cause that idea rapidly proved itself very wrong to me when I flopped my body down.

Before I could think about reconsidering my decision in falling onto the bed, my mind had already done it, and this was very unfortunate for my poor arm. The lamp had fallen over, and the shade hid the many tiny shards of bulb that now were covering my elbow.

Predictably my body flung itself back up from the resting place, my vocal cords disapproving heavily of the newly implanted elbow features.

The shards were tiny enough to not puncture deep, and all I had was just a few spots of red by the time I had rubbed them all out. After I got over that incident, I looked out my window again to look at the mountain.

_There is no way in the world. It really just can't be that. Come on, Jacob! What the hell else could it possibly be?_

Now my head was arguing with itself, but my eyes had already decided it. That, in the distance, looked exactly like Canterlot Mountain. It looked almost the same as it did from a nearby familiar town in fact.


	2. Mankind

**Chapter Two: Mankind's Moment**

"Oh my God," I finally said to myself, becoming aware and accepting of where I was.

My body felt like collapsing, so gently, I laid down on the floor. Thankfully none of the glass had made it quite that far. Vision had started to leave me, so I did what you were supposed to do while passing out, I raised my knees and just sat there, trying to just ignore everything and not think.

After taking a few minutes trying to recoup myself, sight returned to me. I attempted to get up, and held onto the bed railing for support. I remembered what had caused me to collapse, and felt weak again. _Oh God, I'm not dreaming._

Holding myself up by the bed railings, I put my boots back on and started shuffling back out of the room. Gradually I made my way down the stairs, looking out the windows. As I looked outside, the only thing that ran through my head was_ why, just why did this happen to me? Of all people…_

The front door's handle turned, down the porch steps, across the lawn, then treading where the road should've been. My boots touched the dirt of another world. Those marks may not exist now, like Armstrong's, but they became one of the big symbols of my "achievement" anyways. Slowly I walked out, farther and farther, 'til I was in the middle of the dirt road, where I went on my knees. My palms came to my face, shielding them from the world that was too much for me.

Again, my mind tried to convince me that it was a trick, all of it.

"**WHO THE HELL DID THIS?" **I screamed into my hands.

The rest of my body came down with me, and the tears started dripping, coming from my hatred for whoever had ripped me away from home.

Sure, I liked the show, but frankly I had a life that I found to be worth living. To be just driven away from it like that with absolutely no real reason or hope to believe you'd ever make it back had its impacts on me, that's for sure.

A whooshing sound had come into my ears as I contemplated this seemingly gloomy turn, and it was getting slowly more powerful. I managed to see a different blue through the watery blur among the pure sky.

Desiring anything but to be seen and noticed, especially so soon, I ran for the cover of the porch, and hoped against hope that what I thought it was wouldn't see the house. A few minutes passed, and the whooshing was long gone. The trees had, by some form of grace, obscured my residence.

Still sniffling a bit, I went back in the house, and checked the downstairs guest bedroom. There weren't any pictures really down there, so there was no broken glass. Its confinement from the rest of the world was perfect for two little noisy dogs. Back upstairs again, I carried them one at a time down to the bedroom, then brought them their food and water. Now if anything came to the house, their barking would at least be shielded.

To the outside world I went once again, this time going completely across the road. The trees, dirt, heck the entire world was simplistic. Not, well, **exactly** like the show, but to say it was anything near realistic would be dishonest.

The entire thing was nutty, it could've been a painting for all I knew, until I actually went up to the trees. The dark 50-foot tall log really did just look like a tree from a cartoon, and a fairly menacing looking one at that. The Everfree really had a certain sense of creepiness, though that disappeared if you were to retreat to the house. Curiosity by far beat fear though, so of course I went to go see what it was like. The bark of the tree certainly felt real, just like any tree from Earth. It was sharp, not the kind that would be nice to your hands if you climbed it.

Disbelief still stayed with me to an extent, and I started walking down the path, touching all of the trees to make sure. Soon I reached the path's entrance. My house in fact was barely in the Everfree. When I reached this point, I looked around, the path now going up and down the sides of the Everfree. Across the walkway was a hill. I had no idea which way to go, so I walked across the road to the hill just to view my surroundings. Up the short hillside I hiked, to find the sight that would make me feel the most enraptured I've ever been.

Lots of buildings with quaint slanted roofs, red windowsills and framing, and of course the chimneys and odd little wooden perches that seemed to be a standard feature on many of the buildings. This came with a faint (from that distance) but almost enchanting noise of a small-town market. A poor little smile came to me, and finally I thought

_Maybe this won't be so bad._

So I sat down, on the top of the hill, and thought. I tried to think of what I was gonna do, who I was gonna meet, what I would say.

_Let's see… there's Pinkie, Twilight, Applejack, Rainbow Dash, Rarity, and Fluttershy. Definitely should not meet Pinkie or Fluttershy first, probably shouldn't meet Rainbow, don't wanna get myself knocked out. The other three all would probably be pretty reasonable. I don't know where any of them live exactly though…_

I snapped out of thought and looked over towards the town once again. My eyes scanned and I eventually spotted the huge tree and the boutique.

_Dang, both of them are right on the edge of the opposite side of the town. Well, guess I'm gonna have to go find Applejack._

I did realize that I was probably still in shock though, so I actually had some sense to stay seated for a little while and try to calm myself down. I rested for a moment and just decided to listen to the quiet noise of distant talking. Minutes passed by, and I had laid down by this point, staring up at the clear sky, keeping my heart rate in check. The school's bell toll went off at one point, I would imagine for lunch if the time was the same as it when I left.

Unfortunately I started to hear what sounded like a plane again, although at that point I was pretty sure it wasn't any plane.

_Crud._

I dived down the hill as quick as I could without breaking my neck and pushed against the slanted grass to conceal myself. Cringing and hoping that the sound wouldn't come near me, another one came to my ears that only stunned me.

"Uhh… Sir, what are you doing?"

My eyes widened, blood flowed, and breath stopped. Slowly my head turned to this sound.

As my surprised face turned to hers, she started to look frightened.

"Are-are you OK?"

Finally remembering to breath, I gave a huff in response.

"Can-can you talk?" She asked, obviously wanting to help if she could, but not sure if she should.

"I… I… Yes." I said, squirming to sit up and look somewhat civilized.

"Well, are you OK then?"

"Uh… Yes. Well, I don't really know."

"S-so are you hurt, are you-"

"No, I just- I'm sorry, what else did you want to say?" I said in nervousness, accidentally interrupting her.

"No, no you go ahead." She said, seemingly at a loss for words.

"Well, I- I just… Oh my God. Are you real?"

She looked around, and looked back at me thinking I was completely insane.

"Yes, I think I am real. Are you sure you're alright, sir?"

I gave a nervous laugh. "At this point, to be honest, I have no idea. I'm confused, surprised, and I kinda just wanna go home."

"Oh, well I'm sure that my friends and I could help you find a way home. Where exactly do you live?" She replied, seeming more relieved now that I had given at least some reason as to why I was acting the way I was.

"Uh, my house is just down that road. You can see it from here."

"Huh? You live in the Everfree?" She said, turning around to look where I had pointed, "Whoa, I definitely do not remember that being there. Did you just move here?"

"Not willingly."

"What do you mean?"

"Well, I was just there, in my house, that house. It was a perfectly normal day, then poof, big white light, a lot of shaking and I'm here."

"Wow. That had to take a lot of magical energy to teleport you and your entire house here."

"I really don't know if it was magic."

She chuckled a little bit, "What else could it have been?"

"I don't know, but I'd like to find out… I'm sorry, I don't think I've introduced myself. I'm uh, Jacob."

"Oh, well I'm Twi-"

I interrupted her again, on purpose, "I'm sorry, but I, uh, already know who you are, Miss Sparkle."

Now she looked alarmed. "But-but how do you know who I am? I don't even know what you are…"

I only gave a small smile. "That my dear, is a very long story."

"Well would you mind telling it? Frankly with the way you've been acting and talking, it's just made me a bit tense."

"Oh uh, yes, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to spook you, just… really, it is an honor to meet you, first of all."

"It is?"

"Yes, just let me expla-"

Suddenly my phone went off, jingling little jingle to let me know I had just gotten a text, and simultaneously scaring the heck outta the both of us.

"Wha-what in Equestria was that?"

My mouth dropped a little bit and my eyes widened again. "That… That was my phone!"

Scrambling to tear the little device out of my pocket, I pushed the screen to read the new message.

"What IS that?" Twilight asked from the bottom of the hill.

"It's… It's my phone, it's just a thing a lot of humans have." I said, walking down the hill towards her.

"A lot of what have?"

"Humans, a lot of humans. I'm a human, that's what I am." I said, now reading the text.

It was from a friend. The text read: "dude, we just heard about your house burning r u ok"

"What… My house burning? What does he mean?"

"Your house burning? But isn't your house right there?" She said, motioning her head towards the place.

We both looked at my house.

"Uh, it's not burning," She said.

"Nope."

"Why'd you say your house was burning then?"

"I didn't, he did!"

"What? Who?"

"Coby!"

"Who's Coby?"

"My friend!"

"What… I'm so confused… where is he then?"

"Oh my goodness," I said in frustration, "right here," proceeding to show her the phone.

"I don't get it… I didn't even hear this Coby-" she said, not looking at the screen instantly, "Oh, it says it there. Why… does he have such poor grammar?"

"Oh for the love of... just forget it."

"But-but why did he say your house was burning if it's right there?"

"I DON'T KNOW!" I shouted, not liking how things had managed to start.

"Why are you yelling!"

"WAIT!" I yelled, realizing.

"WHAT!" She replied, joining in.

"HOW THE HELL DO I HAVE SERVICE?"

"I DON'T EVEN KNOW WHAT YOU'RE TALKING ABOUT!"

"Twilight, I have service!"

"I still don't know what that is!"

"How do I have service? What kind of provider has freaking inter-universal service?"

"Ugh."

"I have to… I have to… If they think the house burned down… They probably think I'm dead!"

So I sat there for a moment, typing out "Hey all, I'm alive and well, the dogs are fine, the house is fine. It hasn't burned down."

As I was doing this, she just stared at me as I - to her- pushed on this little bright light a bunch.

"And… there. Sent to everyone."

"I'm afraid I still have no idea in the slightest what you're doing."

"OK, OK, it's a telephone. A mobile telephone."

"And what exactly does that do?"

"It's a communication device, a lot of humans have one. Each one has a number, and all you have to do is put the number in the device and it'll call it, and you can talk to the person who you dialed. Or you can text, you just type something in and send it to them."

"So what do you mean by service?"

"Oh, so mobile phones work with this huge network that goes across the world, and it's connected with these big towers on the ground, and these towers then use satellites and send them across space to other satellites that are connected to different towers which connect to the specific phone."

"Wait, satellites? Like the moon?"

"No, no. Artificial satellites. Humans send up a lot of satellites for a lot of different-"

"Whoa, whoa slow down. You 'send' up satellites? As you put things in orbit?"

"Yeah."

"That's… that's amazing."

"I know."

"Where… where do you even get that kind of energy?"

"Rockets. OK, look, I'm sure you're gonna find a ton of human technology awesome, but right now I would really like to just find out what the heck is going on."

"Oh… Right. Well, I don't really know, teleportation is kind of tricky, it gets exponentially harder the farther you go or the more mass you're teleporting. I couldn't dream of teleporting just myself more than a dozen miles at most, let alone the spaces between wherever you come from and Equestria, not to mention that humongous house you've got over there. I don't even think Celestia's magic would even come close to that kind of power."

"Twilight, I truly doubt that I'm simply from just another planet around here."

"How so?"

"Well, just look at me. Look at my house for heaven's sake. Don't I look a little… unusual to you?"

"I guess but… I dunno."

"Well I won't restrain from saying that this place is a helluva lot more… simplistic than where I come from. Not that that's a bad thing. Although it certainly looks much more detailed than the show made it out to be."

"What? Seriously, you're suggesting that you're from another universe entirely and telling me that this place is familiar to you?"

"Again, long story. It'd be much easier to explain to just show you, and furthermore all of you at once."

"Huh? All of us?"

"Yes, you, Miss Sparkle. And Rainbow, who's been freaking the heck out of me up there," I said, pointing at the sky, "ever since I got here. Rarity, whose boutique is right over there on the other side of town, Applejack, and I honestly have no idea which way Sweet Apple Acres is from here. Pinkie, who I assume is at Sugar Cube Corner, although when I looked over at the town I couldn't see it. Fluttershy, but again, no idea where her cottage is. I assume it's somewhere along that path actually. I think that's abou- Oh, how could I forget Spike, your #1 assistant, who's probably over there in that tree." Nailing everyone, I closed my eyes and gave a smug grin.

She looked at me with her jaw dropped.

Breaking my expression, I asked her a question that I just thought of, "Actually Twilight, what were you doing walking along the Everfree before uh, you found me on the hill? Going to see Fluttershy? Ah come on, that'd actually make this day a little better, was I correct in assuming good ole' Flutters lives somewhere around here?"

She simply shook her head "no," although now with her jaw back in its proper place.

"Oh darn. Hmm… Actually, where does that path where my house is lead to exactly? Zecora's maybe?"

I assume I had guessed correctly, because now she had taken a few steps back.

"Alright, how do you know so much about us? Why do you talk as if you _know _us?" She asked in an accusing manner.

"Hm. Guess I can sorta explain it to you right now then, if you're going to be so demanding. Twilight, you like a good story, right?"

She only stared at me, obviously not wanting to participate in what I was setting up.

"I'll take that as a yes. Well, if that story is a really good story, you'd get sucked into it, right? You'd almost feel as if you're there with the characters, you'd see what they see, whether that be making new friends to stop evil and revert such evil to its good form and maybe reunite that form with their sister after an unbelievable time of being separated?" I paused to watch her reaction

Now her jaw dropped, and her eyes dilated.

"Are you seriously suggesting what I think you're suggesting?"

"Or maybe trying to unite said friends who had been broken under chaos, just to become broken yourself, only to have someone remind you of the value of your friendship? Or maybe even doing everything you can for what you think is right for your family, until you see what you may have done, and after being shamed by everyone, have the courage to admit that you may have been wrong. But only, and only to find out that in the end you were in fact right. Heck, if that was me I would've been saying 'I told you so' to everyone, but I didn't see you saying that to anyone. All I saw was that you were happy that everything turned out alright in the end."

As I had gone on, she slowly started smiling at these memories, I think she even shed a few tears at the end. Holy crap though, was I glad I had done that because that almost seemed to make her a thousand times more comfortable.

"So… so we're stories in your world then?"

"Heheh. Sort of. You were a lot more than a simple book if that's what you're thinking of. But yeah, essentially. And lemme tell you what, you guys are damn good ones. I'll explain it later, but no one at all expected that the lot of you would be as entertaining as you are."

Twilight seemed sort of surprised that I swore, but she shrugged it off almost instantly. We sorta sat there at the bottom of the hill together. She chuckled a bit, at what I didn't instantly know.

"What?" I asked, with a bit of a laugh myself.

"I don't know, it's just kinda funny, you'd never think that you were a, a story…"

"Ah."

"Just… I don't know."

I sighed.

"I don't know either. If I actually have contact with Earth still, somehow, then is literally the most important meeting held in human history... Jacob Raines and Twilight Sparkle. Huh."

She looked at me questioningly.

"Oh yeah, well, on Earth, humans are essentially alone. No other beings that are on nearly the same level as humans. Nothing else really talks. You ponies have a bunch of other creatures that are just as smart as you. On Earth it's humans and a bunch of wild animals. And don't go thinking that's a good thing.

"Why not?"

I breathed out heavily again.

"Humans just… aren't the same as ponies. I'll just say they aren't the most peaceful things to exist."

"Oh, are you in a war or something right now?"

"Ha. I wish I could say it's just one war. People are insanely divided on Earth. There are 7 billion humans,"

"Seven BILLION?"

"Yeah, all from different places, and being taught different things. Disagreements happen, fights. The last 100 years haven't been the most pretty in terms of violence."

"That sounds terrible…"

"Seems like you got plenty of your own problems out here though. Princesses wanting eternal night, a draconequus wanting eternal chaos, and Queen of the Swiss Cheese Legs trying to suck the love outta ya."

She genuinely laughed a bit at the overused joke.

"Heheh, so… animals on your planet are?"

"Wild. Heck, here the animals can actually understand you. Sure, you could train a few animals on Earth to follow a few basic orders with WEEKS of training, but here they just understand you. Maybe not on the same level of intelligence as you ponies, but you certainly wouldn't use them." A moment passed, "Oh, that's something else I should mention. Ugh, that's actually gonna kinda suck. Humans are omnivores." I opened my mouth a bit to show her the incisors.

"Oh…"

"Of course, of course I wouldn't be cruel and eat things that are actually intelligent, and heck I've actually got an emergency food supply back at home. And humans can survive being vegetarian, in fact quite a lot of people do it."

"Hm."

"Sorry if that bothered you, probably shouldn't even had mentioned it."

"No, no it's fine. A lot of Fluttershy's animals, ya know."

"Oh yeah, I guess a lot of them would be that way too, huh?"

"Yeah."

I allowed a few more moments to pass to let us both contemplate what was happening. It seemed easy to forget.

"Well, should we start whatever it is we're gonna do?"

"Yes, I think we should. However I should drop these off at Zecora's first." She said, motioning to a few bottles that I could somewhat see in the bags she had put on the ground a little while after we started talking.

"Well then we should go do that, especially after I've delayed you so much."

"No, no, it's fine. She just wanted them by the end of today, I have the rest of the day to do it if I wanted to."

"Alright, we'll do whatever you want to do then."

"I actually do think I should drop these off though, just so I don't have to carry them around everywhere."

"Let's do that then, as long as you're OK with me coming along."

"I am completely OK with it, after all I think Zecora of all ponies would be the least..."

"Threatened by me?"

"I wouldn't say that, but sort of, yeah."

"You're a real comforter, you know that?"

"Hehe, sorry... Maybe you can tell me more about that telephone along the way?"

"Ha, I don't see why not."

"So how were you telling the phone what to send to everybody?"

"Ah, you see, it's really simple," I said, pulling out the phone, "all you do, is just push the letters on the screen."

"But they aren't actual buttons."

"Fine, push one of them for yourself if you're so unsure!"

So she did. And so a letter popped up on the tiny screen.

She gasped a bit.

"But how does it do that!?"

I only laughed at her.

"To be honest I have no idea myself!"

And so my giggling caused her to start to too. So on we trotted, or well, walked, with me answering the random questions she had about things I had previously mentioned…


End file.
